Design of service capacity for the ground crew at the airport check-in counters

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative approach for the problem of service capacity design for the ground crew at the airport check-in counters. Design/methodology/approach – Using data collected from the airport check-in counters, several characteristics of the service demand were studied. First, many service time-dependent operating characteristics are addressed over a specified time window to evaluate the problems from the current ground crew allocation. Second, a linear programming model is developed to determine the optimal number of check-in counters to open over the specified time window based on the case study. In addition, sensitive analysis is conducted to further explore the dependency effect of the factors as well as improve the model. Third, the shift adjustment of the ground crew allocation is provided so as to satisfy the given service demand. Findings – Numerical results indicated the effectiveness in the improvement of the human resource utilization of the proposed approach. The superiority of performance is illustrated in terms of less counters to be opened and decreased daily working hours. Originality/value – The study is novel by applying the integrated approach so as to design a proper service capacity and thus the service supply and demand can be balanced.